It's About Time We Talk About Michael Fassbender's Shocking Abuse Allegations

I remember it so clearly: In January of 2012 I fell in love with Michael Fassbender. I can pinpoint the exact moment to when I saw his Mr Rochester in Jane Eyre, holed up in my best friend's Brooklyn apartment during the infamous polar vortex storms.

The snow was still falling, incessantly, not so much in picturesque, windswept flurries but in an almost monolithic block, as if there would never be anything other than snow, white snow, for the rest of days. But as soon as we switched on Jane Eyre - on Netflix! My first introduction to this wonderful service! - we forgot to care about the snow.

Who is bothered by snow, anyway, polar vortex or otherwise, when there are men like Michael Fassbender in the world? His Rochester was as written, every woman's perfect man: Beautiful and broody, belying a sensual inner self, capable of the most incredible depths of emotion.

Michael Fassbender in 'Jane Eyre'. Photo: 'Jane Eyre'Source:Whimn

So I did what everyone does when they fall in love. I google stalked him. I bought a copy of British Vogue that month because he was in it, still one of the best celebrity profiles I've ever read.

"He mulls over a chicken sandwich in a local cafe whose coffee machine specialises in an appalling screech that near-obliterates cogent conversation, but whose geography virtually necessitates my sitting in Fassbender's lap - which is fine by me," the author wrote at the time. God, I was so jealous.

I watched a bunch of his other movies - Shame, A Dangerous Method, the X-Men prequels, of course, Hunger, watched a bunch of Hex episodes - and doubled-down on my deep-dive. I unearthed interviews and quotes, videos of goofy dancing on talk shows and pranks on co-star James McAvoy, and then... I found out about his shocking domestic violence allegations.

Assassin's Creed stars Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard spoke to news.com.au about what attracted them to the video game adaptation

November 30th 2016

a year ago

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It was astonishingly simple to find them on my deep-dive in 2012. A story on TMZ came out around the time of Inglourious Basterds, in which Fassbender had a supporting role, and which launched him onto the Hollywood scene. This was 2010, before Jane Eyre, before X-Men, before Shame and 12 Years A Slave and his subsequent Oscar nomination.

March, 2010: Fassbender's ex-girlfriend Sunawin Andrews "filed a petition for a restraining order against him," with the Los Angeles County Court TMZ wrote. Documents supplied to the court by Andrews claimed that Fassbender was drunk during a film festival in July 2009, and when she woke him "he was sleeping in urine... and he began to be violent and threw me over a chair breaking my nose."

On another night, Andrews alleged that her partner dragged her along the road from his car after an argument, leaving her with a twisted ankle, an injured knee cap and a burst ovarian cyst.

Michael Fassbender and Sunawin Andrews. Photo: GettySource:Whimn

"Michael was drinking and became angry," Andrews said in the court documents, obtained by The Daily Beast today and shared for the first time. "Michael was driving my car dangerously fast and screaming at me. I begged him to stop the car in fear of an accident, or for my children who were home asleep. As we got closer to my house I put my car in stop. Got out walked around the car to pull key from ignition. Michael drove of[f] dragging me along from the car."

Andrews continued: "[He] stopped after he realised I could not walk and got out of the car. He picked me up and put me in car as my friends pulled up behind us. They stayed the night to help calm things." Later, she woke up "in a deep sweat and pain with vaginal bleeding."

Andrews wanted Michael out of her house, which she said she rented in her name, and where she lived with her two children before she met the actor. She also wanted him to undergo 52 weeks of therapy. According to court records, the judge granted a temporary restraining order. A month later, she withdrew her claim.

Speaking to The Daily Beast this week, Andrews said: “You’ve got the paperwork. What more is there to say?”

Michael Fassbender. Photo: GettySource:Whimn

I remember emerging from my deep dive in 2012 in a daze. How had I never heard of these allegations before? Why was no-one talking about them? I brought them up with friends in conversation, and many of my male friends took the line that since the charges were dropped, it clearly meant that he did nothing wrong.

But I wasn't so sure, and I'm still not. As LaineyGossip pointed out, being a fan of Michael Fassbender - loving him, as I thought I did back in January 2012 - means that I must believe he is innocent of these abuse charges. And to believe that, I must believe that Andrews is a liar.

At the time the charges came out in the press Andrews' credibility as a victim was roundly attacked. "[T]he Irish Mail on Sunday can reveal that the woman who is threatening the 32-year-old Irishman’s reputation and, indeed, his very livelihood, is herself a woman with a troubled and somewhat seedy past," an Irish newspaper wrote. "The model has had a string of lovers including an internet porn baron and a married man; she has children by different fathers, her first as an 18-year-old; and her early years were spent posing for ‘erotic’ lesbian pictures.”

Cool. Not sure how any of that makes her abuse allegations any less credible, but there you have it. The newspaper also detailed further instances of domestic violence allegations in her "chequered past". "Indeed, much of her history seems to suggest that, either she suffers from a persecution complex—or else she genuinely brings out the worst in men," the newspaper wrote.

Similarly, Fassbender's mother and father went on the offensive. “Anyone who knows Michael at all knows that it’s a complete fabrication," Adele Fassbender told The Daily Mail. Josef Fassbender, his father, told The Irish Sun: "I don’t know where she is getting this story from, Michael is the most gentle man you could ever meet."

Michael Fassbender with his parents Adele and Josef. Photo: GettySource:Whimn

Fassbender himself has never commented on the allegations, and neither has his now-wife Alicia Vikander. The Daily Beast noted that the actor did not accompany his new bride to the Golden Globes this year, where Vikander was a presenter and wore a black dress in solidarity with the #TimesUp movement.

Not only has Fassbender never commented on the story, but he's seemingly never even been asked the question in any interview he has done in the almost eight years since the allegations first surfaced in March, 2010. (Vikander, too, has never been asked, though I don't believe it's her responsibility to be spokesperson for her husband, in the same way that it's not Alison Brie's responsibility to be held accountable for her brother-in-law James Franco's behaviour.)

Neither party discusses their relationship in any great detail. Recently, for the cover story of this month's American Vogue, Vikander said simply that her marriage to Fassbender is the most "happy and content... I've ever been."

Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander at the Venice Film Festival. Photo: GettySource:Whimn

The time may very well be up on their silence on this subject. Now, in this post-Weinstein, #MeToo era, Fassbender may not be able to escape probing questions about these allegations buried just below the surface in his past.

And, we too, will no longer be able to ignore them. In 2016, when Fassbender and Vikander were hitting the promotional trail for their movie The Light Between Oceans where they met and, as legend goes, fell in love, The Establishment posed the question "Why Are We Ignoring That Michael Fassbender Was Accused Of Abuse?" The article concluded that race played a significant factor , drawing comparisons to the way Fassbender and, say, disgraced Birth of a Nation director Nate Parker were treated by the press.

"So why the silence on Fassbender’s promotional trail?" The Establishment asked. "How does he escape the paintbrush of scandal? He is quite literally making money off of the commercialisation of his latest romantic partner. Why shouldn’t he be made to feel a bit off balance with a question about how he might have beaten his partner six years ago?"

Tom Sherbourne (Michael Fassbender) and Isabel (Alicia Vikander) in a scene from THE LIGHT BETWEEN OCEANS. Photo: EOneSource:Whimn

I've known about these allegations since 2012, and yet I have continued to watch Fassbender's movies, and written about them, and on many occasion, really loved them. I've continued to watch him be goofy on chat shows. I've never interviewed him, but if I had, would I have asked him about this alleged abuse? Probably not.

One of the by products of this #MeToo era is that any of your faves, problematic or otherwise, could be next. Did you like James Franco? Or Louis CK? Was Casey Affleck your Internet Boyfriend™? (God, I hope not). What about Aziz Ansari? Ben Affleck? Kevin Spacey? George Takei? Gary Oldman? Mario Batali? Jeffrey Tambor? Ed Westwick? Jeremy Piven? Dustin freakin' Hoffman?

The re-emergence of these allegations today is going to force a lot of people - myself included - to engage with them in a meaningful way. "What do I do about the monster?" Claire Dederer asked in her marvellous essay "What Do We Do With the Art Of Monstrous Men?" in The Paris Review last year. " Do I have a responsibility either way? To turn away, or to overcome my biographical distaste and watch, or read, or listen?"

I turned away. Not from the art, but from the allegations, because I had something so silly as a stupid teenage crush on the man, and I didn't want that to be ruined. Now, when I watch his movies - even, and indeed especially, Jane Eyre - I can't separate man from (alleged) monster. And I don't want to watch Jane Eyre everagain.